Exercise is essential to ‘grow back your brain’

Any form of exercise, including walking, swimming or playing tennis, could be helpfulA Bello/Riser

Physical exercise is as important in staving off dementia as keeping your mind active, scientists have said.

Taking a brisk walk three or four times a week can effectively “grow back your brain”, helping to reverse early signs of neurodegeneration and improve performance on memory tests, research has found.

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Chicago, Kirk Erickson, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh, rejected the idea of an inexorable descent into Alzheimer’s disease. “The brain and cognitive function of older individuals remain highly plastic,” he said. “It’s not this inevitable decline that we thought it was.”

In a study involving 120 people aged 60 to 80, half of the participants took part in brisk walking sessions…